Education Secretary Pick Betsy DeVos' Senate Confirmation Delayed

WASHINGTON, DC — A Senate committee has delayed the confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, the Michigan school choice advocate picked by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Department of Education. The hearings, originally scheduled to begin Wednesday, have been pushed back to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 17.

The delay comes after Senate Democrats and others grumbled they’re being asked to rush confirmation of Trump Cabinet nominees who haven’t filled out ethics paperwork. DeVos, a billionaire political operative who has used her family’s vast Amway fortune to influence education in Michigan, is among them.

The paperwork includes a financial disclosure and a letter outlining not only nominees’ potential conflicts of interest but also how they’ll handle them if confirmed. For example, oil executive Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, said in his letter he won’t take a salary or bonuses from ExxonMobil and will sever all ties with the company.

Those opposing DeVos’ expected confirmation worry she will undermine public education programs and further dilute a limited pool of federal education dollars by funding school choice voucher programs. Trump has called her a reformer who will take on special interests that stifle debate on improving the U.S. education system.

The decision to postpone DeVos’ confirmation hearing to accommodate Senate leaders’ schedules was announced late Monday by Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patty Murray of Washington, the chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively, of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

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In an emailed statement to The Detroit News, Alexander said the delay “will not change our plans to vote on the nomination of Betsy DeVos in the HELP committee on Tuesday, January 24th.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has called the flurry of confirmation hearings “a rush job” and told PBS that “jamming all these hearings into one or two days, making members run from committee to committee, makes no sense.”

An aide to Murray told The Detroit News the Washington senator is “hopeful that this additional time will allow Ms. DeVos to complete the required ethics paperwork and in time for the Office of Government Ethics to submit it to the HELP Committee before her hearing, just as every single one of President Obama’s nominees did and as Leader McConnell demanded eight years ago.”

DeVos is a handful of Trump Cabinet picks who haven’t completed the ethics disclosure reports, the Office of Government Ethics said Monday. Besides DeVos, they included homeland security nominee John Kelly, commerce nominee Wilbur Ross and housing and urban development nominee Ben Carson.

Besides Tillerson, reports have also been received from attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, defense nominee James Mattis, CIA director nominee Mike Pompeo and transportation nominee Elaine L. Chao. Sessions’ hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee opened Tuesday.

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Trump told PBS he’s confident all of his nominees will pass the ethics reviews. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has also dismissed concerns about vetting,

“Yes, everybody will be properly vetted, as they have been in the past, and I’m hopeful that we will get up to six or seven picks of the national security team in place on day one,” McConnell told PBS.

In a letter to Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat in Massachusetts, Office of Government Ethics head Walter Schaub Jr. said the number of uncompleted ethics disclosures is an issue of “great concern” and that the frantic schedule put “undue pressure” on agency ethics officials to “rush through these important reviews.”

Schaub said in the letter that he isn’t aware of any occasion in the past four decades since the OGE was established that Senate hearings were held before the completion of an ethics review process. Schaub was appointed by President Obama in 2013 to head the OGE.

Trump’s transition team accused Schaub of trying to “politicize” the confirmation process. In a statement to CBS news, the transition team said:

“President-elect Trump is putting together the most qualified administration in history and the transition process is currently running smoothly," the transition team said in a statement reported by CBS News.

“In the midst of a historic election where Americans voted to drain the swamp, it is disappointing some have chosen to politicize the process in order to distract from important issues facing the country. This is a disservice to our country and is exactly why voters chose Donald J. Trump as their next president.”

Photo by Keith A. Almli via Wikimedia Commons